Across a matter of days in 2024, the seafloor in part of the Indian Ocean dropped by about 13 feet, and roughly 5.7 billion ...

For years, Mars has sat in an awkward middle ground, too geologically quiet to look like Earth. At the same time, it is too ...

When most people hear the phrase "ocean acidification," they think of coral reefs, shellfish or declining fisheries. Those ...

A surprising reversal in molten iron flow beneath the Pacific is giving scientists a sharper view of how Earth’s magnetic ...

In the 45°C heat of the midday April sun, I swing my sledgehammer into the terracotta-varnished lobes of pillow basalt ...

Long before oceans teemed with life, Earth endured relentless violence. Asteroids slammed into its surface again and again, reshaping the young planet.

Ancient asteroid impacts may have done more than reshape Earth's surface—they could have helped spark life itself. New computer models show the collisions created enormous underground hydrothermal ...

Radioactive specks buried deep inside ancient ocean crust are forcing scientists to rethink what Earth has been quietly passing through in space. These traces are not ordinary geological leftovers.

An AI simulation of an impact shows basalt-rich (purple) and basalt-poor (green) regions. (Curtin University) The planet Earth we live on today bears very few traces of its infancy. The 500 million ...

Major clues to the origins of our planet—and life itself—are locked inside some three billion-year-old volcanic rocks from ...

The spread of the ocean floor, as tectonic plates spread apart, is known but hard to observe. Scientists have now documented ...

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has uncovered evidence that a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock on the rim ...